1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet printer that ejects ink onto a printing medium to perform printing.
2. Description of Related Art
Some ink-jet printers perform printing by ejecting ink onto a paper as a printing medium from a printing head that reciprocates perpendicularly to a paper conveyance direction. It is important, from the viewpoint of printing quality, to ensure flatness of the paper in a region confronting the printing head. Thus, particularly when a long paper is used as the printing medium, there may be adopted an approach in which many holes are formed in a platen that supports the paper in the region confronting the printing head and a suction fan disposed under the platen generates suction force through the holes to thereby bring the paper into close contact with a surface of the platen. The holes are, in general, formed in an entire surface of the platen in a substantially uniform pattern.
In such a printer, in association with a conveyance of the paper on the platen, the paper closes, among all the holes formed in the platen, the holes formed within an area where the paper passes during the conveyance thereof, i.e., within a paper passing area. The paper closes those holes sequentially from the ones disposed upstream in the paper conveyance direction. On the other hand, the holes formed outside the paper passing area are not closed with the paper, and therefore remain opened. When the suction fan drives in this condition, a large amount of air flows into the holes that remain opened. Therefore, there is a problem that, when such a printer performs printing onto vicinities of both edges of the paper in a direction perpendicular to the paper conveyance direction, airflow generated by the suction force of the suction fan leads away ink that is ejected by the printing head toward the vicinities of the edges of the paper, to result in decreased ink-landing accuracy and thus deterioration in printing quality.